


Bitter Algebra

by cofax



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Abortion, Gen, gratuitous angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-16
Updated: 2010-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-08 01:20:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A grown woman in an untenable position, making an impossible choice.  Posted June 2000.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bitter Algebra

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by Maria Nicole and Yes Virginia.

This walk from the car to the door of the small brick building   
is the hardest thing she has ever done. Algebra, she reminds   
herself; she has solved the equation and this is the only option.   
But Mary Mother, it is hard.

She once thought that standing up to Bill was the hardest thing.   
He was so much bigger, armed with the superiority of age and the   
conviction that as the son and heir he was always right. That   
was difficult to contest, especially at twelve.

Facing down her father when she chose to take the offer from the   
Bureau instead of the residency at Hopkins: that was hard. It   
took her years to forgive herself for defying him.

Once she joined the X-Files, the difficult tasks came faster.   
Getting up and going on, after her abduction, after Melissa,   
after the cancer, after Emily. The words "hard" and "difficult"   
began to have little meaning. Her life was a desperate struggle   
to move on, to keep pushing forward against the current.

After a while, she'd started to dodge whatever she could,   
conserving her energy for the battles she could not avoid. She   
had Mulder call her mother to meet them in Allentown when her   
cancer was diagnosed. She hid the memory of a great looming   
darkness over the ice field in the back of her mind, rather than   
pull it into the light and recognize the implications. She never   
did ask Mulder straight out about his history with Diana.

She took seven years to respond to Mulder, too frightened for the   
last step, until the world itself nudged her forward. Reaching   
out to him on that one night in late spring had terrified her.   
The fear was a fist around her heart, a stone cold and heavy in   
her gut, a ringing in her ears. But she did it; and he took her   
in, and the fear dissolved into warmth and the press of long   
fingers on her skin.

She thought then that there was nothing more to fear. That   
loving him had been the highest hurdle she had to face. She   
should have known better. Something harder always comes along.

They had a grace period of some months. One summer, not golden   
but sticky and green and humid with life and love and sex and   
the misunderstandings of new lovers. She is thankful for that   
but she cannot bring herself to remember it.

She cannot indulge in the pain.

She has accepted that he has disappeared, but not that he is   
gone. She will find him.

 

Telling Skinner was a mistake. She is watched now; Langly found a   
camera in her bathroom yesterday. She has known Skinner was   
compromised for months. She should have contained her astonished   
joy that Mulder had, this once, left her something of his.

But this child is yet another game piece. That someone made from   
love can be considered so disposable is blasphemy, but she knows   
it as truth. Krycek is there, watching, that brittle blonde   
with the undefinable accent at his side. She will not even have   
a chance to hold this child, much less raise her to adulthood.   
It goes against everything she was ever taught, to realize that   
there is no hope. But Mulder took her faith with her and she is   
left with ashes.

She already has a hostage to fortune and she cannot afford   
another one. She has heard too many stories from Mulder about   
what he saw in the labs and the secret installations. The uses   
to which a child of theirs could be put make her brain freeze in   
horror.

No, she thinks. Not to my child. Not to him, not to her, not to   
me. It ends now.

Which has brought her here. To a small clinic in Reston, where   
she sits in the passenger seat of the ancient VW bus, watching   
the activity across the street. They have been here for twenty   
minutes. She has $2,000 in cash in her wallet, and copies of her   
medical records in the pocket of her coat.

Frohike has been very patient. She told him nothing, merely to   
lose any surveillance and pick her up outside a grocery store   
around the corner from her apartment. Now he is unsettled, the   
fringe on his gloves fluttering as he taps his fingers against   
the steering wheel.

She never told the Gunmen what was going on after her collapse in   
their offices, but they must have figured it out. Mulder must   
have told them something about the changed nature of their   
partnership. They were his best friends after her. Are, she   
reminds herself grimly. Are his best friends.

While Frohike seems clearly nervous, she cannot begin to identify   
her own state of mind. It passed beyond grief and anxiety and   
into white noise sometime between 1:00 and 4:00 a.m.

She will do this. She must do this. It is the only hope she has   
of saving any of them. She has to believe that lives will be   
saved, that it is better for her child never to draw breath than   
to live the life she would find here. She has to believe this.   
This bitter algebra must be correct, because to be wrong would   
shatter her. She prays not to find out if she is wrong. She   
will barely survive the equation even if she is right.

She sees the irony of her position all too well; it is because   
she knows that this child within her is a child, not merely a   
bundle of soulless cells, that she is here. She must protect her   
child.

This irony would be lost on the dozen or so men and women outside   
the building across the street. She can see the signs from   
here. The pictures are multi-colored, graphic, wrenching even   
in the rain from fifty yards away. The protesters keep their   
legally-mandated distance from the door of the clinic, but when   
a girl approaches from the parking lot, accompanied by two women   
with blue badges on their raincoats, they leap into action.

One older woman, her face a soft oval, thrusts the picture of a   
fetus into the face of the girl. She says something, the lines   
of her face soft with concern. The girl huddles under the arm of   
the woman on her right, and the three hustle to the clinic door,   
avoiding the pleas and entreaties of the protesters as much as   
possible.

Scully unbuckles her seatbelt and draws her gun.

"Scully?" Now Frohike really looks nervous.

She shakes her head and places the gun carefully in the glove   
compartment. "I can't bring this in there." When she unlocks   
her door the little man starts to get out of the car as well.   
"Please, I'd rather you stayed here." Habit.

But Frohike isn't Mulder: his feelings aren't hurt. He's tougher   
than she thought.

"No way in hell are you walking in there by yourself." He isn't   
afraid to meet her eyes. She swallows suddenly; tears threaten,   
again. She has wept more in the past week than at any time in   
the past year.

When she doesn't say anything he comes around the car and raises   
an umbrella over her head. With his other hand he takes her   
cold hand in his, and begins to walk with her slowly across the   
street. As the two of them approach the sidewalk in front of the   
clinic the protesters gather, pelting her with prayer and   
imprecations.

This is the hardest thing she has ever done. If she can do this,   
there is nothing that anyone else can do that will ever hurt her   
more. The prayers of the protesters swirl around her, competing   
with her own for the ears of heaven.

Holy Mary Mother of God, protect my child because I cannot.

***

End

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: I had the honor of beta-ing "Woman's Work" by M.Sebasky,   
> and she was kind enough to allow me to extrapolate upon her   
> concept. She has my support, my friendship, and my gratitude   
> for her generosity. My thanks also to M.Sebasky, AliciaK,   
> Luperkal, and Maria Nicole for their speedy beta.


End file.
